, 1887-08-23
A CARGO oE cocoAnurs.
A Pretty Description Of the CocoAnut's
Growth-UnIoadInE a Vessel.

@SNNN A"0 =
Growth-UnIoadinE n Vessel.
1 have found a queer crowd over at q
Brooklyn pier where a cargo of cocoa
nuts was being unloaded. The largest of
these nuts are shipped here from Aspin-
wall and C~artagena, but the smaller and
finer variety is brought from Cuba and
Porto Rico. A steamers cargo will
count out from so, 900 to zoe, 200. / can
never see one of those almost human
faced %cocoanuts that l do not live over
again my idyllic wanderings in Cuba
with stately Don Miguel, and hear his
pretty description, in the old Luyano
posada, of how the cocoanut propagates
itself.
''These very eyes, said the Don, ARE
as much the outlook of the cocoanut's
perpetual life as mems eyes are the win
dows of their souls. Through these eyes
the new tree breaks to the sun. The ovule
is a slender, CON shaped mass in the case
at the big end of the fruit. Its sustenta-
ton comes from the rich, milky meat
about it, from which it draws its power
as it forces its way to the light through
one of these strange eyes, and in what
ever direction it may be pointed it then
steers straight for the sky. Innumerable
delicate thread like roots fill the nut and
feed upon the mother heart, until the
nutrition is exhausted, when tho power
full sh0ll parts like an egg shell from
which struts the young chicken, and the
quick soil receives the ~outreaching roots
lovingly. Almost as soon as this
tender shoot has reached the air,
leaves form in diminutive represen-
tation of the pinnate leaves of
the full grown tree, which sometimes
reaches a height of seventy feet, though
its myriads of roots seldom exceed the
size of your lead pencil. Within four or
five years fruit is borne, and is continued
forty or fifty years in never failing and
increasingly bountiful supply, clustered
up there at the top of the trees as if
hiding beneath their plume like tufts of
foliage"
These cargoes of %ocoanut are I'M
loaded by the same desperate class that
work in the holds of banana vessels.
They are passed up from below in bas-
kets, each containing from twenty to
thirty nuts. On deck they are counted
and assorted into two grades. They are
then sacked on deck, 100 first grade and
1913 second grade nuts to each sack, and
Immediately carted away. Frequently
half the cargo is spoiled from heat; or in
a rough voyage the terrific pounding
given the nuts ruins many, and by the
time they are landed they are in a rotting
condition. The purchasers of the unin-
jured c%ocoanuts get the sick" or
''she," nuts, as the %vernacular of the
trade terms them, for nothing. And in
these is sometimes found the larger profit.
On Washington and Barclay streets are
great dens where they are turned into
money. The Soul and rotten meats are
removed, dried, ground with sugar and
desiccated ready for use In deadly sweet
meats for your children, or consumption
by yourselves in cakes and puddings;
while the shells, shag and all, when
ground are worth twelve cents per pound
for mixing with your pleasant spices. So
that the %cocoanut subject is one we are
bound to digest, however little we like it,
or however much the honest manufac-
turers and the good doctors make out of
it.-Edgar l.. Wakelnan in Globe Demo-
crat.